LibertyBell7

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About Me

A Michigan liberal, athiest, proud of both of those qualities and recognizing one has no correlation with the other. I'm proud I share a state heritage with the likes of Michael Moore, James Earl Jones, Robin Williams, Jeff Daniels — heck, the list would be too long and I haven't even gotten to the musicians — but feel great chagrin that this state has also produced or fostered the likes of Theodore Nugent and a certain Corporazi named Willard Romney. BTW: The reason the trees are the "right size" is because the Lumber Barons of the 19th century clear-cut the state.

Journal Archives

First: On general principles (and relating to Golden Age nostalgia), the US was formed by slave-holding, land-owning gentry white men, and we've struggled with that devil over our shoulder for the entire 237 since our founding. That said, there are worst times and better times, and the mid-50s through the 70s may have been our best times.

To the point that things were all good until Kennedy cut taxes on the wealthy? that is a bit of a Right-Wing trope trotted out to demonstrate that the (failed/failing) Supply-Side concept actually started with a Democrat many revere as transformative. I grant he did propose legislation (passed after he was killed) that dropped rates on those with annual earnings above $400,000 from 91% (Put in place by the Republican President Eisenhower) — to 70%...

The plan Kennedy's team drafted had many elements, including the closing of loopholes (the "tax reform" Kennedy spoke of).Ultimately, in the form that Lyndon Johnson signed into law, it reduced tax withholding rates, initiated a new standard deduction, and boosted the top deduction for child care expenses, among other provisions.

Could you even imagine the war-cries that would erupt from K Street if anybody proposed returning to Kennedy-era taxes on the rich?

• About any speech by Teddy Roosevelt about fighting inequality, such as:

We stand for a living wage. Wages are subnormal if they fail to provide a living for those who devote their time and energy to industrial occupations. The monetary equivalent of a living wage varies according to local conditions, but must include enough to secure the elements of a normal standard of living--a standard high enough to make morality possible, to provide for education and recreation, to care for immature members of the family, to maintain the family during periods of sickness, and to permit of reasonable saving for old age.

Arthur Jenson to Howard Beale:
"You think you've merely stopped a business deal. That is not the case! The Arabs have taken billions of dollars out of this country, and now they must put it back! It is ebb and flow, tidal gravity! It is ecological balance! You are an old man who thinks in terms of nations and peoples. There are no nations. There are no peoples. There are no Russians. There are no Arabs. There are no third worlds. There is no West. There is only one holistic system of systems, one vast and immane, interwoven, interacting, multivariate, multinational dominion of dollars. Petro-dollars, electro-dollars, multi-dollars, reich-marks, rins, rubles, pounds, and shekels. It is the international system of currency which determines the totality of life on this planet. That is the natural order of things today. That is the atomic and subatomic and galactic structure of things today!"

I don't get your point. Even if that the bottom 99% are not faring so well is a fallacious meme, and that it should be, more correctly, the bottom 80% — are you suggesting this is better?

First reaction: For all the number salad you toss out there that this is so, I can point to a plethora of data that refute the parsing. I find it helpful to visit http://inequality.org/ frequently to remind myself exactly how tilted the economic reality has become, in this country and globally.

As an example, I find this:

Joseph Stiglitz, The former head of President Bill Clinton’s Council of Economic Advisers, says the growing gulf between the 1 percent and the rest of the U.S. population is hurting the economic recovery.

Second reaction:
I still don't get the point. Is it that things are not as bad as some are saying, or am I just blinded by the blizzard of numbers and am misreading? I'm proud you appear to be trying to be seeking elective office (if I likewise understood the intent of your site, Koch2congress). However, maybe because you appear to be seeking a position in the sphere of politics, I'm doubly troubled that you also appear to suggest things are not so bad.

With the Corporazi Right attempting Gerrymander the Electoral College, I believe things are very bad indeed. And with this ongoing war against our democratic republic being waged by the moneyed elite, this is no time to let up (that's a shout-out to the original post).

When Reagan said, "In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem," many folks responded, "Hell yeah!" — and failed to think about what he was actually telling us. He had just committed the unpardonable political sin of speaking honestly, but wrapped in a nice, shiny rhetorical populist bow to defeat critical thought. That was his primary talent.

Oh, yeah: That was his first inaugural address in 1981.

So, what was the honesty-leakage? We are the government, right? In short, he was telling us democracy is the problem. We can't solve our own problems. United we stand does not work, in his world view.

And his means to ''solve" this problem? Rob from the 98-99% and give to the elite plutocrats. Trickle-Down Theory. Voodoo Economics. Poppy Bush could have said, "Read his lips" — but he had already been sucked to the dark side.

32 years ago.

Of course, the planning for this long "game" (war against democracy) started even further back, with telltales showing up under Nixon, and a few even further back than that with the philosophies espoused by the Family (read Jeff Sharlet sometime for a good scare; http://www.jeffsharlet.com/). That could stretch this back to the late 40s, after WWII.

In terms of the Matrix mythos: It's time to choose the red or blue pill.

First — yes. Absolutely. This is no way to govern. More on this later.

Second, the cost to going over the cliff: Roughly 2 million unemployed would have had their relief checks cut off starting today. Though estimates I've seen vary quite a bit, and it wouldn't have pulled the drain plug all at once, that's something in the ballpark of $70,000,000 that would not be funneled into grocery stores and/or to utilities in one month. And people would have grown hungry or cold in that time.

That's a cost.

Back to the governance problem:

In shorthand, I call all Rethugs and Blue Dog DINOs Corporazis, and they are economic terrorists intent on destroying democracy. They are waging war against our methods of governance and, until we who are not Corporazis recognize their intent (waging war), we cannot prevail. You have to name a thing before you can gain control over it.

From a past voice, we hear this perspective:

“We can either have democracy in this country or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.”

–Louis Brandeis
U.S. Supreme Court Justice (1856-1941)

Military leaders tell us, "You don't negotiate with terrorists." And until these Corporazis are labeled by their tactics — including that they are systematically pulling apart our democratic republic (everything from making congress and the courts into dysfunctional messes on the federal level to voter suppression in the states) — we will be unable to staunch the bleeding wounds they are inflicting and turn the tide.

It's time to choose the red or the blue pill, to choose to wake up in the Matrix of their making and fight back, or continue to slumber until they have completed creating America, Inc., where corporate rights trump those of We The People every time.